OdysseusThe Powerhouses of the Internet Are Turning Hostile to Websites
This artical describes how many of the major “social networks” are trying to keep people on their silo rather than venturing off onto the wider web. To me this is terrible! That wider web is the web,k and where all it’s value comes from! If you’re just using specific services, why have The Web in the first place? (Certainly we’d still need The Internet though).
I think that in order to continue the health of this wider web (or as I call it “the open decentralized web”), we need competitors to these sites that are comfortable remaining small. And I hope my UI work on Odysseus speaks to this.
Specifically I’ve done the following to support smaller sites:
- I implemented topsites before configurable homepages so as not encourage centralizing on the same site. Not that I won’t implement customizable homepages.
- I’m working on webfeed support to help people keep up to date with more websites.
- I refuse to directly integrate even my own webservices, unless it’s a dataset that encourages more exploration.
- I always look to see how I can discourage people from centralizing on any single website.
My integration of the DuckDuckGo search engine stands in contrast to those principles, but I’ve got plans to remedy that.